What's the difference between an 'Attribute' and a 'Stat'?

News & General Discussion
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If there is a difference that is.

When I hear the word ‘attribute’, I think of characteristics such as Strength, Vitality, etc. that have no direct impact on the gameplay, but are used to calculate how much a character has of a certain ‘stat’. For example, in Diablo 2, all characters have the same stats in common (health, mana, etc.) but how much of a stat a character has is decided by the attribute behind the stat. For a melee character, 30 Vitality might mean 200 health, but for a mage-class, 30 Vitality might mean only 100 health.

What do you think the difference between an attribute and a stat is?

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I think it depends on the game system. These terms came from tabletop gaming and different game systems use different terms.

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Think of it like this, an Attribute is like a Tag in Unity, it’s more of a description, say like a creature is a Fire Type. That’s an Attribute. While stats are for things like Strength, Toughness, Stamina, etc.

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Not always.

In some other games, it is what is calculated using the stat, such as the player’s hit points, or health. Hit points, etc., come from the stats after a calculation that usual includes 1 or 2 stat bonuses and possibly other bonuses like armor.

In other systems, the attribute takes the place of the stat, especially in games where the attribute is what determines the dice roll, such as games that use things like perception, wits, composure, etc, rather than simple physical stats.

Still others use attributes to mean exactly the same as stats, so instead of calling strength, charisma, etc. stats, they are called attributes.

The last one makes the most sense to me since really, statistics is some calculation while in most games, strength is simply a number, basically an attribute of your character. He is strong. She is charismatic. The numbers that are calculated from the attributes should be the stats. So health, hit points, etc. should be stats.

Regardless, it can be anything you want it to be. As long as you define it for your players ahead of time, they will understand. Your players come from different games, different systems. You could define it one way, and half your players will complain that you should have done it another way.

So pick something and stick with it.

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That could be another, although never saw it in tabletop gaming. Maybe in some video games though?

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Are they different? I don’t see that I would give those 2 words to a customer, with the expectation that they would mean different things. Maybe only in the game designer’s head.

Gigi

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Yeah, and that gets confusing. They are different in some tabletop games and I have seen them defined differently in game design docs. However…I confuse them all the time which really frustrates one of my programmers who is a huge DnD fan. lol

To me, they are interchangeable.

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Okay, my DnD fanatic programmer says that Stats are any numbers you use in the game. So all numbers are Stats.

Attributes are the base numbers that define your character, such as Strength, Dexterity, etc.

Vitals are calculated from your Attributes, such as health, vitality, etc.

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The terminology is mostly BS and doesn’t matter. The main point is you have first order stats, the stats the player sees and directly controls, and outputs, the definite results like damage or whether the player successfully hid. Completely dependent on the system, there can be second order stats made of first order stats that directly make outputs. Those are your stat tables in D&D, while Pokemon doesn’t have any (it just has an entirely different class of hidden stats that go into making the first order stats).

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10

I agree. :slight_smile:

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Some games would call these Traits. Which is fitting because the definition is “a distinguishing quality or characteristic”.

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I’ve been wondering why stat systems don’t work more like this. So, hear me out on this one - instead of starting up a character and manually assigning stats by using…well, stats:

Character: Tim the Bandit
Stats:
Charisma: 3
Strength: 3
Endurance: 2
Intelligence: 6
Agility: 5
*: Defines a fast, smart character with the constitution of a paper napkin, who’s only marginally stronger.

I was wondering…would it not be a better idea to have a different UI? Sure, under the hood you can still have stats, but what about creating a character this way?

Character: Tim the Bandit
Traits (Under-the-hood stat change)
Cunning - This character is skilled with various techniques, but is a bit scrawny. (+2 INT, -1 STR, +1 CHR)
Studied - This character has learned about various devices, and is good at interacting with them. (+1 INT)
Twitchy - This character has really good reaction time, but looks a bit shifty… (+3 AGI, -1 END, -2 CHR)
Conditioned - This character has basic physical fitness training (+1 STR)

These ‘traits’ that our character has do translate efficiently to a list of stats that all game entities have, but you could do more things in other situations, just by looking for a particular Trait!

Hilda the Innkeeper:
All text in ascending order of priority
(Default Text): Hello there! Need a room for the night? That’ll be 10G.
(Scholar Trait): Hello. A room will be 10G. We also have a drawing room with some books on lore for our region!
(Twitchy Trait): …Hello. If you’re needing a room that’ll be 15G. Also, we charge an extra fee if the soap goes missing.

In the context of a work that is primarily an RPG (not Borderlands or Fallout 4 which are dominantly FPSes), this could lead to a more organic world that responds to a character’s Traits more fluidly, and leads to NPCs changing their behaviors as the game progresses, as an RPG will periodically award a player with a chance to choose new Traits, or events that spontaneously add a new Trait.

…Hmmm. Filing cabinet on that one.

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Some games do use stats this way. :slight_smile: All depends on the game.

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The old Fallout traits were in the ballpark. They didn’t do anything to the SPECIAL stats, but they added a bunch of modifiers in all sorts of places.

The inverse isn’t that uncommon, where instead of displaying numbers, some level of descriptor is used.

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Which games? I’d like to do some “research”.*

*: Where the objective is to have fun. I’m not due for another JRPG attempt for another year and a half.

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I have played a myriad of pen and paper games, all kinds of different systems, and several of them use a similar approach where a descriptive term determines the stats. One that sort of does this is D20 Modern. You can choose stats that are contrary to the descriptions/Class of Strong, Dedicated, Tough, etc. but if you do, the skills and bonuses you get will mean a lot less.

Pendragon does this a bit too, in that you choose traits instead of stats. As you play, your traits change based on your actions. Very fun and cool game.

There are others, but the names have escaped me…over the many years. lol

I don’t play enough video games of this type to know how these work.

I do know that we are doing something similar for our game, not exactly, but we are basing the stats for each player character on the background, interests and personality of the character, which should work well for a role playing game.

Problem is, most video games are based on combat and players want a great deal of control over their character creation. Playing a combat game, class-based or skill-based, and not being able to determine if your character is strong, or wise, or has great magical ability, will drive them crazy. The lives of their character depend on the player having this knowledge.

In a role playing game, we have a lot more leeway.

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“For a melee character, 30 Vitality might mean 200 health, but for a mage-class, 30 Vitality might mean only 100 health.”

As an aside, I think from a design standpoint, this is a dangerous route to choose. Vitality should be measured the same across the board, and then the number fluctuates according to their class or race. A mage might start with 10 vitality and a warrior might start with 30. A dwarf, traditionally is hardier (according to fantasy tropes) so might start with a higher vitality and an elf will start with a higher agility or dexterity.

Or possibly and what you might be thinking of (and I am just speculating) are the modifiers to these attributes such as a warrior might have 1.5x modifier to vitality and strength and a wizard will have a 1.5x modifier to intelligence. Each level he or she gains 1.5x amount of intelligence when compared to a warrior.

As far as attributes vs stats go, it is ultimately up to the designer, but I would suggest that traditionally the attribute or trait is the name of the thing being measured and the stats are the actual measurements of that attribute or trait, that allows one entity to be compared to other entities in the game (your hero battling a mob or other player) so that the game can decide outcomes of those encounters.

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I own Fallout 3 on Steam. Does Fallout 3 work using this sort of Trait system?

I like Fallout 4 - it’s a good Bethesda-developed Borderlands game. I bought it last month and have enjoyed it a little bit, but it was educational because I’ve learned a way to not to make a RPG. It’s a FPS with skill checks, pretty much. I’m not knocking the game…but I couldn’t honestly say, “Fallout 4 is an RPG!” It’s a FPS with lots of RPG mechanics bolted onto it.

In other news, my “Minuteman Tower” at Tenpine Bluff has just repelled another invasion, and I’ve identified a Synth villager, who has been disarmed (not literally…yet.) Turns out if you’ve perked the right way, you can unmask synths using VATS.

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Oh no, I’m talking about the old school, isometric Fallouts (1 and 2). Seriously, pick up the bundle (usually with tactics too) when it’s on sale. 1 and 2 are must play western RPGs.

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It’s funny how we mentally account for things. “Vitality should be measured the same across the board” but “modifiers to these attributes” can end up producing the same results and are ok. Not trying to criticize, it really is funny how mental accounting works.

The point of these systems almost all root back to DnD. Basically, the player needs to have a short, descriptive list of stats that help them to visualize their character “my guy is strong as an ox but kind of dumb!” - but the game needs to handle a much wider variety of checks: hit rolls, damage rolls, resistance rolls, dodge rolls, etc. And they need to make different kinds of challenges feel different - so the rolls need to be modified by the challenge: climbing up some vines on the side of a ruin wall is easier than trying to scale a sheer cliff.

So the simple numbers the player is shown are used to derive the more detailed odds used for the dice rolls the needed to resolve each action.

The reason these are broken out into two sets are really sort of a ‘presentation’ issue - you don’t want to overwhelm the player with a million numbers, you want these numbers to be as clear as possible, while allowing the system to extrapolate as needed - the second set of numbers, the ‘derived’ stats should be available for your power gamers to really dig into, but most gamers just want the simplified summary.

The degree to which you need two sets of stats depends on how complex your overall game is, how different the sorts of challenges you need to represent are, and how much detail you want to present to the player.

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